I completly agree with this, even if seem to
presuppose that *image* is a main issue, what may be,
if we look at what image implies (public interest,
donation, number of contributors and so on), but it is
certainly not so obvious you seem to think.
Traroth
--- Anthere <anthere9(a)yahoo.com> a écrit :
Right
Time for me to say something here.
Angela is essentially right about myself not being
willing to get
involved in the decision of a new language creation.
I consider the board is not here to micromanage
things and that natural
leaders or natural groups of decision makers should
appear to make the
final decision on whether to open a new language or
not.
The board must certainly be involved in the deciding
whether to create a
NEW PROJECT (such as Wikiversity or others), because
this decision is
*strategic* to our whole organisation.
But once a project has be agreed upon, I do not see
the decision of
opening one language or not being the job of board
members, EXCEPT for
decision such as whether to work in real languages
only, or to accept
constructed languages, because again, it might be a
strategic decision.
My opinion on the matter is simply that languages
such as Klington are
not welcome. And it seems the other board members
agree with this.
However, collecting and offering knowledge to the
largest number of
people on earth is our mission. And it makes sense
that knowledge is
offered in the language people know best. So, I
consider that by
default, as a board member, I agree with the
creation of any (real and
used) language.
It also makes sense to ME, to help sustain
endangered languages; so I
see no limit to our possibilities here.
However, AS A PERSON, I try to be practical and
realistic.
Practically, a project with only one editor working
on it, has high
chances to be crap or pov. It is NOT a 100% certain,
but chances are high.
The problem with new languages is not only workload
for the developers,
the problem with a new language with very few
participants is simply a
project which is most of the time of poor quality.
The QUANTITY of
information in the small wiki is NOT an issue for
me. These projects
will NEVER be 100 000 articles big. It does not
really matter. Even if
it contains only 5000 great quality stuff, it is
WORTH it. Because good
quality content is worth.
But most small projects usually are of poor quality.
And this is not
very good for our image.
Some will argue that as long as they are small, they
are not very
visible, so it might not matter much. To a certain
extent, this is true.
However, each time I visit the french wikinews, my
heart grieves,
because though small, though demo, it is visible.
And poor quality is
noticed.
So as a person, I would prefer that all the small
languages future wiki
only start if they can show a significant group of
editors involved and
motivated. However, some would also argue that if
new languages REQUIRE
5 editors motivated at the same time to start...
some encyclopedias such
as Bambara would NEVER start. And THIS would be a
disastrous decision.
So, here is my handle.
If more than 5-10 real and motivated people are
asking for a new
language, by all means, let's start the new
language. Why on Earth would
you need a board decision to do this ? These guys
are real, with real
needs and real motivation and real language. The
project is approved. So
? Why not creating it ?
If only 1 or 2 people are asking for the language,
then we should
discuss the reality of the language proposed and the
opportunity of the
opening. If the language is spoken by 10 millions of
people, by all
means, we should open it. 10 millions
readers/editors IS significant. If
spoken by only 200 people, then we might decide to
get to know the only
interested editor a bit more ... so delay the
creation a little bit.
By the way, it would be nice that small new
languages make the effort to
make short reports from time to time, so that any
major difficulty does
not go unnoticed (such as a pov domination).
Anthere
Traroth wrote:
That you don't want to make the work to
create new
wikipedias is something I can understand, but why
destroy existing one ? 'Beats me !
What I cannot understand is : except the workload
problem, where is exactly the problem with new
languages ? Do you want to say which language
people
have to speak ? Or what ?
Traroth
--- Tim Starling
<t.starling(a)physics.unimelb.edu.au> a
écrit :
>Arbeo M wrote:
>
>>... at least not for the past three months or so.
In the past you only had to drop the name of some
language you'd heard of and a new wiki for that
language was created right away. This surely
wasn't a
very intelligent approach, for it left us with
quite a
number of inactive Wikipedias.
Nowadays, it's the opposite extreme: there are
heaps
of requests that have been discussed very
thoroughly
by the community (cf.
).
>>Some of them are pretty well-qualified and
>
>supported
>
>>by numerous native speakers willing to
contribute.
>>However, not a single new Wikipedia has
been set
>
>up
>
>>for quite a while now.
>>
>>Some time ago there had been a remark that it was
>
>hard
>
>>for our developers to recognize which new
language
>>proposals can be considered as accepeted
by the
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